Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, techniques of generating virtual viewpoint contents using a plurality of viewpoint images that are captured in synchronization from the plurality of viewpoints by a plurality of cameras situated in different positions have been drawing attention. The techniques of generating virtual viewpoint contents from a plurality of viewpoint images enable users to watch, for example, highlight scenes of soccer games from various angles. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2014-215828 discusses a technique of generating and displaying desired virtual viewpoint images using images of an area that are captured by a plurality of cameras arranged to surround the area.
However, when a plurality of captured viewpoint images is gathered in an image processing apparatus such as a server to generate virtual viewpoint images, there arises a problem that a large amount of data of the captured images needs to be transmitted. For example, even in a case in which a server and a plurality of cameras are daisy-chain connected, if the server is configured to receive all images captured by the cameras, a large amount of data of captured images needs to be transmitted. Transmission of a large amount of data puts a load on communication paths and increases a load of reception processing performed by the server. While the problem that arises in the case of generating virtual viewpoint images using images captured by a plurality of cameras is described above, a similar problem can arise also in a case of generating virtual viewpoint contents containing virtual viewpoint audio using sound pickup data acquired by a plurality of microphones.